


Under the Sky

by Vagrant_Blvrd



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Mild Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-17 22:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29600001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vagrant_Blvrd/pseuds/Vagrant_Blvrd
Summary: “So,” the man currently invading Din’s personal space says, biting his bottom lip as he looks Din over. “You come here often?”Din’s heard better, and when he says as much the man laughs, mouth pulling into a genuine smile.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Luke Skywalker
Comments: 30
Kudos: 304





	Under the Sky

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on [this not!fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29052918/chapters/71694522) where Luke ~falls into the criminal life after running into Han earlier than cannon and various shenanigans that take place after the fact and ended up being from Din's POV??? 
> 
> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s not often that Din’s bounties come to him instead of the other way around.

========

“So,” the man currently invading Din’s personal space says, biting his bottom lip as he looks Din over. “You come here often?”

Din’s heard better, and when he says as much the man laughs, mouth pulling into a genuine smile.

“Hey,” he says, the sly edge in his voice nowhere to be found now. “Cut me some slack, I wasn’t prepared for you.”

Fair, Din supposes, given he hasn't prepared for someone to stumble headlong into him, pulling Din into a shallow alcove off a main walkway in the process, and the invasion of his personal space by a complete stranger.

One who seems more intent on...savoring the experience than trying to kill Din, and Din is curious to see where this is headed, nothing better to do until he reaches the bounty hunter guild house.

The man gives Din a more thorough once-over, and when his eyes are level with Din’s visor he _winks_. 

Blonde hair and eyes a clear, bright blue.

His hands are resting on Din’s chest, slight pressure as he leans in just a little close. Opens his mouth to say something, but running footsteps and a frantic cry of “Luke!” brings his head around

Din looks up as well, doesn’t even realize he’s moving to push the man behind him in a protective gesture until he catches a flicker of confusion on his face that morphs into another smile.

“Oh, no, don’t worry,” he says, patting Din’s shoulder reassuringly. “He’s with me.”

The ‘he’ in question is a scruffy looking man wearing dusty clothes and a look about him Din’s seen on more than one bounty he’s tracked. The way he swears the moment his eyes land on Din, hand dropping to the blaster at his hip is also something of a giveaway, but he doesn’t draw it.

“ _Luke_ ,” the man hisses, jerking his head to indicate Luke should step away from Din. “We gotta go.”

Din glances down at Luke’s soft sigh, wondering at the wry smile he tips in Din’s direction.

“Maybe we can pick this up another time,” Luke says, laughing as his friend wraps a hand around his arm and tugs him out of the alcove and towards the spaceport at a run.

========

Somehow, Din isn’t surprised when one of the pucks this world’s bounty hunters guild gives him is for Luke.

After a further moment of deliberation, he picks up the one for Luke’s friend as well thinking it will cause less work for him in the end with the two of them traveling together.

========

Three systems and one crashed speeder later, Din has the belated realization that he was very, very wrong about his earlier assessment regarding Luke and his friend.

Also?

No one mentioned the Wookiee.

========

They run into one another on antoher backwater world in the Outer Rim several months later when Din’s tracking a spice smuggler.

He catches a flash of yellow from his periphery as he’s talking to a Rodian in a cantina for information on his bounty, and when he looks up Luke is looking back at him.

Blonde hair and eyes a clear, bright blue.

Easy grace to him as he straightens from his lean against the bar, drink at his elbow. He doesn’t seem surprised to see Din, and Din snorts when Luke makes a show of scanning the room as if expecting Din to have backup after their last run-in.

“Friend of yours?” the Rodian asks, annoyed at being ignored, but Din’s not going to get anything useful from him, and doesn’t see the point in humoring him further.

“You could say that,” Din says, and gets to his feet.

He sees Luke smile, eyes flicking to the side just as a drunk Aqualish stumbles through the crowd, his human companion reaching for him too late to keep him from running into a server.

The cantina goes silent in the ensuing clatter of glasses and mugs hitting the floor, a dismayed cry from the server and angry, drunken insults.

Din sighs, already moving forward to block the Aqualish from laying hands on the server.

By the time the...accident is cleared up and the Aqualish’s friend is dragging him away, Luke’s nowhere to be seen and Din - 

“For your help,” the owner says, and drops a small stack of Calamari flan into his hands along with a datastick? “A gift from your friend.”

The owner’s eyebrows tick up meaningfully, and Din nods as he accepts both.

========

The Calamari flan goes to fixing the _Razor Crest’s_ targeting computers. The datastick leads Din to his bounty.

Also?

“Kriffing _Solo_ ,” the man snarls, broken nose and bloodied teeth and slaver written all over him when Din was told otherwise. “Knew I couldn’t trust him or his partners.”

========

The third time they run into one another happens half a year later, and Din hears Luke’s laugh before he sees him.

Which makes sense given his current situation, Din supposes.

Combination of bad luck, worse timing, and failure to see the betrayal before the trap snapped shut around him. His armor has been taken and he’s wearing a sack around his head, rough cloth and the slow burn of anger simmering under his skin.

“First time being on this side of the bars?” Luke asks, not unkindly.

The sound of metal rattling, clanking, _chains_ , and warmth pressed against his side as Luke settles down beside him.

Din turns his head to look at him, automatic, and Luke makes a wounded sound.

“That looks nasty,” he says, and Din feels fingers brushing his temple under the sack, light, careful, blood still tacky from the butt of a blaster rifle.

Din pulls his head away from Luke’s touch. “I’m fine,” he says, although his head swims alarmingly from the sudden movement.

Luke snorts, muttering something Din can’t quite make out. “Of course you are,” he says, and there’s a ghost of the mockery, playfulness to it that is painfully familiar, welcome.

“What are you doing here?” Din asks, because now is not the time. “And where are your partners in crime?”

His ribs still ache in the cold thanks to the Wookiee, and Solo is simply annoying.

Still, Din cannot imagine they’d allow Luke to remain in a place like this for long. Dusty little moon orbiting a frozen rock of a planet and a marshal who fancies himself king.

“Oh, you know,” Luke says, and for all he tries to play their situation off as a mild inconvenience, there’s worry at the heart of it. “Around.”

========

An explosion rocks the compound hours later, Luke laughing in Din’s ear as he startles awake.

“And there they are now,” Luke says, hands gentle, careful, as he helps Din to his feet, chains seeming to chime. “What do we say we find your armor before we get out of here?”

========

Luke shoots him on a planet Din can’t remember the name of when Din’s _this close_ to catching him, fresh bounty puck in a pouch on Din’s belt and Solo’s wide eyes and “What the hell, Luke, I thought you two were buddies now?”

The shot makes Din stagger backwards, punches the breath from his lungs. When he looks up Luke is being dragged into a busy marketplace by Solo.

“Sorry!” he yells, sheepish shrug and apologetic smile before the two of them are swallowed up by the crowd.

Din sighs, and looks down at the carbon scoring on his chestplate.

“Uh,” the marshal who insisted on coming with Din says, eyeing Din warily. “Should we follow them?”

For a moment Din considers it, he does.

But he’s been working almost non-stop since that dusty little moon months back. The fact he was so slow to react when Luke pulled the blaster on him is a clear sign he needs to rest. He’d made a show of it, telegraphed his intent, and still Din hadn’t moved out of the way in time.

That, and he knows there will be no finding Luke or Solo now. They’ll either go to ground so well Din could walk right past them and not know, or push for space, and the _Falcon’s_ always been faster than his _Crest_.

“No,” Din says. “There’s no point to it now.”

========

There’s a package waiting for him when he reaches Nevarro.

A recorded holo message from Luke apologizing once again for shooting him, and a datastick that holds information on the location of a stash of beskar the Empire confiscated that Luke and his associates happened across.

Like all the times before, Din doesn’t stop to question how Luke knew to give this information to him.

(Still, a part of him wonders all the same.)

========

“You know, I grew up on a farm,” Luke says, the next time they happen to meet. “Not too far from here, actually.”

He’s staring up at the clear blue sky above Tatooine, shrapnel in his gut along with Din’s fingers as he fishes jagged pieces of metal out, hands slippery with Luke’s blood.

Around them the ruined frames of their speeder continues to burn, blackened and twisted. Carrion scavengers circle overhead, braver individuals swooping towards the still figures of their attackers just beyond the wreckage.

“Really?” Din asks, understandably distracted. “Somehow I find that hard to believe.”

Luke is one of those people who seems too...everything for somewhere like Tatooine. 

Bright, shining against the vast expanse of sand and rock and desolation. Too much cruelty to fathom crammed into the small pockets of civilization. 

Luke laughs, and Din swears as he holds him down when laughter turns into spasms, blood pounding in his ears and time slipping away from them.

“No, it’s true,” Luke says, turning his head to look at Din. He’s smiling. “Moisture farm.”

Din tilts his head, skepticism clear, and Luke takes it for the challenge it is as he tells Din about his life...before.

Before meeting Solo and the Wookiee. Falling into a life of crime and discovering he was _good_ at it, that people fell for his sweet farm boy smile every time, Din, every single time, can you believe it?

Din bows his head to his bloody work and ignores the way Luke’s voice grows quieter as he speaks, breathing labored.

========

Solo’s ship roars overhead as Din finishes applying the bacta patches to Luke’s injuries, and for once Din is glad to see it.

========

Din doesn’t see Luke or his associates for a long time afterwards.

He thinks of asking, thinks that Karga might know, but...he doesn’t.

He asks for jobs instead, and Karga hands over bounty pucks.

It’s better that way.

========

Din takes a job.

No bounty puck.

No chain code.

========

There’s another planet somewhere. 

There always is.

But now there’s the Child and his powers Din doesn’t understand. A quest the Armorer has set him on, duty she placed in his hands. Seemingly impossible when everywhere he goes people tell him there are no more Jedi.

And yet, and _yet_.

========

“Well,” Luke says, and he’s laughing again, as though it hasn’t been years since they last met. “I can honestly say this was the last thing I expected to find here.”

Din looks up.

Blonde hair and eyes a clear, bright blue.

They’re being held in makeshift cells a local warlord had made to hold dissidents.

Luke’s is opposite Din’s, and he’s wearing binders on his wrists. He seems unbothered by them.

Din’s armor has been taken from him again, but this time they’ve left him his helmet, cruel mercy though it is.

There are binders around his wrist as well, connected to a bolt in the wall of his cell, chaining him.

Somewhere, they have the Child.

========

The warlord seems to have taken an interest in Luke. Sweeps into the room with his guards trailing him to stand in front of Luke’s cell, full of self-importance and delusions of grandeur.

Luke regards him with a bemused expression, allows him to tire himself out with his grand plans, ambitions, and then -

“Hm, no,” Luke says in answer to the man’s offer of sharing control of a world with him. 

A world, a system, and more power than Luke could ever dream of if he were to join the warlord, ally his power with his and _take_.

Luke looks over the warlord’s shoulder at Din and smiles. “I’ve heard better.”

========

Luke climbs to his feet once the warlord and his guards leave, spits blood onto the floor at his feet. A tooth comes flying out.

“Well,” Luke says, working his jaw. “That’s never pleasant.”

He rolls his shoulders, looking up at the ceiling of his cell. He makes a pleased sound and nods to himself, and flashes Din a smile.

“Just a little longer,” he says, and fiddles with...his own hand? Fingers pinching at the skin of his right hand, a look of concentration on his face and then the gleam of something between them. Metal? “There we go.”

Din watches as Luke proceeds to pick the lock on his binders, letting them fall to the floor as he flexes his wrists, checking for range of movement.

Luke paces the confines of his cell, looking up at the ceiling again. He stops on the far side of his cell.

He feels…

There’s no reason for Luke to help Din, for him to ask for his help and expect him to agree, and yet.

“Luke!”

Luke looks up in surprise. “Din?”

Din shuffles forward, pleads his case.

“There’s - “ Din’s throat feels tight, crowded with fear and worry and desperation. “They have a child,” he says, knowing with absolute certainty Luke won’t abandon one to the warlord’s mercies. 

Luke’s expression softens, the smile he gives Din gentle. “We’ll get them out,” he promises, and then he moves.

An easy jump to the bunk, and then another that he only makes look easy to the grate just off-center of the bunk near the top of the ceiling where there’s a narrow lip running around the entire room, just enough space to hang from

Din watches as Luke punches through the metal grate of the vent in the ceiling with his right hand, grunt of effort loud in the silence. Quickly drowned out by the clatter of the grate hitting the floor below him.

(Too far, Din’s mind tells him, for a human to jump unaided, but he ignores that small voice in the back of his head.)

Luke hangs there for a long moment, and then he swings his legs, using the momentum to help him as he swarms up and into the vent opening where Din loses sight of him. Hears him moving through the vent, but too soon even that becomes impossible to track.

========

“You armor’s heavier than it looks,” Luke says, startling Din out of his thoughts.

Morose, circling in an ever tightening circle of what ifs and recriminations and -

“What?”

Luke rolls his eyes, and Din realizes he’s carrying Din’s armor, his weapons.

He can only watch as Luke sets them down carefully outside Din’s cell and turns his attention to the panel that controls the cell door.

“Close your eyes,” Luke says after a moment, Din’s blaster in his hands. “We’re going to have to do this the hard way.”

Din moves back as far as he can and closes his eyes as ordered.

He hears Luke fire once, twice, and then kick something before the door shudders open wide enough for Luke to squeeze in.

“Hey, hi,” he says, giving Din a reassuring smile as he reaches for the binders on Din’s wrists. “We’ll be out of here in no time.”

Din watches Luke work, confident in his skills, and for the first time since he and the Child were captured feels like he can breathe.

========

Luke leads the way through the warlord’s compound, certain where he’s going.

“How?” Din asks, as they hide in an alcove to allow a full contingent of heavily armed guards to pass.

Luke shrugs, gaze sliding away from Din’s as he moves out of the alcove and sticks to the shadows. “Blueprints, schematics,” he says, but it feels like a lie.

========

Din steps into the path of a blaster shot aimed at Luke’s back, trusting in his armor, and gets a startled look from him when he whirls around at the pained grunt that makes it past Din’s lips.

The guard who fired it doesn’t get the chance to take another shot, Din’s vibroblade in his chest before he can think to try again.

“Din - “

Din shakes his head, stopping only to retrieve his vibroblade before gesturing for Luke to lead the way. “No time,” he says, tight, worried, and Luke nods as he takes off with Din close on his heels.

========

The warlord is nothing more than a small, petty man, sniveling mess without his guards and weapons and to protect him.

Pleads for his life, offers up riches that were never his to claim. Blood on his hands, lives needlessly ruined, and he took the Child.

“Din,” Luke says, the Child held safely in his arms, hand on Din’s shoulder. “The New Republic wants him.”

It sounds like a mercy, Din knows, allowing the warlord to live. To be handed over to the New Republic to deal with, and clearly the warlord thinks so as well. But when Luke turns his gaze to Din, grim line to his mouth, and wordless promise, he knows it isn’t.

========

Din stays silent a Luke contacts the New Republic. Watches as he speaks in code, a different man from the one Din met all those years ago on the back streets of an Outer Rim world.

He keeps his silence when a New Republic cruiser drops out of hyperspace over the warlord’s planet and Luke meets with their officers, the Child's soft, worried babble a balm to Din’s nerves through it all.

And when Luke guides Din’s ship past the cruiser and into hyperspace bound for – somewhere, Din finally dares to ask.

“How?”

========

Luke takes them to a jungle moon orbiting a gas giant in the Outer Rim.

“Yavin 4,” he says as they enter atmosphere. 

Din knows the name. Site of a major victory for the Rebel Alliance during the war, the destruction of the first Death Star.

Luke’s expression is...complicated.

The story he tells Din once they land is even more so, and Din thinks he understands how Luke knew the things he did. The help he gave Din without being asked.

========

“He’s adorable,” Luke says, laughing as the Child stalks the closest thing Yavin 4 has to a frog, ears flicking forward and back in his excitement.

“He's a menace,” Din replies, but it lacks an edge, far too fond for one.

The look Luke gives him says everything.

========

“I’m meant to take him to his kind,” Din says, the Child snuffling in his sleep, an ache in his chest Din made peace with long ago. “My – the Armorer decreed it so.”

Luke hums, shifting awkwardly, nervously, gaze sliding away from Din’s the way it does when there’s something he hasn’t told Din.

Din...sighs.

Remembers the cell on the warlord’s planet, the things Luke had done no one should be able to do. The way the Child had reacted upon meeting Luke for the first time. The way _Luke_ had reacted.

And then he waits.

========

“...I know someone who can help you with that,” Luke says finally, meeting Din’s eyes as he shrugs, helpless smile on his face, answer obvious in the way he holds himself.

And _yet_.

========

Din thinks of the years he’s known Luke. Long, frustrating, exasperating years.

“Who?” Din asks, and under his helmet where Luke can’t see, he smiles.


End file.
